DEMONSTRATIONS AND OTHER GROUP ACTIVITIES

Art has the power to transform, to illuminate, to educate, inspire and motivate. Harvey Fierstein

We occasionally have demonstrations from local artists. These are always a good way for our members to learn how to improve their painting techniques but also to appreciate the talent & hardwork of others. It also serves to give an input of much appreciated inspiration! In the past we have enjoyed demonstrations from watercolour artist Jake Winkle whose animal paintings in particular are much admired by many of us.

Lynda Appleby

On Tuesday 8th April this year (2025) Lynda Appleby visited St Mary’s Art Group and spent over two hours demonstrating her ‘method’ for painting lively and colourful acrylics. Lynda is a professional artist who lives on the Wiltshire/Dorset border and has received huge acclaim for her stunning acrylics. She usually starts these by using a few vibrant acrylic inks to block in areas of colour and from that point on the paintings just leap off the page with their brilliance of colour. She took us through a landscape painting step by step and certainly managed to ‘wow’ us all throughout. We all thoroughly enjoyed her demonstration and went away inspired to ‘have a go’ as soon as possible. All artists have their own methods but not all manage to convey their technique with such enthusiasm & passion as Lynda did. Our thanks for an excellent morning Lynda.

In February 2024 artist Paul Weaver visited us for a morning. Paul is a full-time artist, tutor and demonstrator, based in Bristol, UK. His primary inspirations are light and atmospheric effects. Townscapes, markets and the bustle of the city are favourite subjects,

as well as landscape, marine and coastal scenes. He currently specialises in watercolour, but also enjoys working in oil, acrylic and line and wash. He took us thorough a full demonstration of how he goes about painting a landscape watercolour - from the initial charcoal sketch of tones to the final watercolour & also showed us how to achieve perspective with buildings. A good piece of revision for many of us! It was an excellent demonstration and we all thoroughly enjoyed it.

In 2022 local artist Steve Hall paid us two visits and showed us his methods for painting watercolours, acrylics. and pastels. These were wonderful experiences and we all thoroughly enjoyed his illuminating & entertaining delivery.

Steve now has his own gallery in Bradford-On-Avon www.art@bradfordgallery.co.uk

Lock Down Group Project

As well as pursing our own art projects during lock down, we kept our paints flowing by setting up group projects. One was to all paint a small square of an image without knowing what the full image was. This was very successful and great fun! Here is the result....